05 Dec

Jakarta: A Promising City for Startup

by Veritrans Indonesia

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A research done by a property marketplace, Lamudi shows that there are 5 cities which are located in developing countries, who could become the next Silicon Valley in term of startup. Surprisingly, Jakarta is chosen as one of them. The other 4 cities are Medellin in Columbia, Amman in Jordania, Lahore in Pakistan and Lagos in Niger.

Several reasons are explained by Lamudi about why Jakarta is chosen. Middle class continuously develops and people from this class will continuously come to this city, which bring a strong purchasing power, high internet mobile penetration and an increase in demand for online service, which further brings a lot of opportunity for new business idea. As a result, Jakarta have a strong market fundamental for technology startup.

Although there is still no relief fund from the government, a lot of Indonesian investors such as Merah Putih Incubator, GDP Venture and GREE Venture have already entered this market. In order to overcome challenge which is resulted from the rapid development of this city, startup companies are advised to be more practice because they should earn money from the very first day of launching. Due to this reason, Jakarta is home for many startup who are focusing on travel, eCommerce and lifestyle.

The presence of investor and the capability of consumer to adopt and consume startup products is one of the principles why San Francisco and Silicon Valley can develop as startup center in the world. Jakarta, although the traffic condition here is not ideal, it has those principles components. The other cities chosen are also due to the ownership of the similar components.

Even if Bandung and Yogyakarta are well known as the source of developers and designers in Indonesia, it cannot be denied that creating new Silicon Valley means creating an ecosystem and the absence of those two components explained in previous paragraph makes Bandung and Yogyakarta are still a long way to go in becoming the center ecosystem for startup development in Indonesia.

Undeniably, the result from Lamudi survey is debatable. Reasons described by Lamudi is rational enough for deciding Jakarta who have all components needed by startup to develop their companies.